Meanwhile, Baron Poll had dismounted, and came huffing toward them, having recovered his axe.

Roland leapt from his own horse, sword at the ready.

The green woman almost did not notice the two men, until the girl tried to move back. Then it lashed out and grasped her forearm, studied her from eyes as dark green as her own blood.

"Let her go!" Roland shouted, stepping forward, brandishing the halfsword. Baron Poll stepped up beside him.

The green woman turned on them, stared at Roland and through him. She tossed the child aside like a rag doll, then rose to a crouch, sniffing the air like some animal, her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s swaying as she shifted from side to side. She caught a scent, peered fixedly at Baron Poll.

Roland's heart was pounding in fear.

"That's right," Baron Poll said. "I'm the one you're after. I'm the one you want. You smell blood? You want some? Come and get it."

The green woman leapt at Poll, covered sixty feet in three bounds. Roland prepared for her charge. He set his feet, raised his sword, and timed his swing so that it would lop off the green woman's head.

With a mighty shout he whirled the blade, just as the green woman reached Baron Poll.

Roland threw his full weight into the blow, brought the sword down on the green woman's neck, and felt as if he'd struck the blade against stone. The blade clanged into her, bounced off her neck and slapped Roland's left wrist.

The pain of it stung him; left his sword arm throbbing.

Then the green woman had Baron Poll. He'd fallen backward, too astonished to swing, and she crouched over him, grasping the handle of his axe.

Baron Poll struggled to move the blade from side to side, but even with his endowments of brawn, he could hardly budge it.

She held the axe, studying it. She sniffed the graak's blood, then with a long sensual tongue, experimentally licked the gore from the blade.

Roland fell back a pace as the monster closed her eyes, relishing the taste of blood.

The girl child was still whimpering. Blood pounded in Roland's ears and sweat poured down the front of his tunic. It seemed obvious that the green woman craved blood as a drowning man craves his next breath.

"By the Powers, get her away from me!" Baron Poll said, grunting in terror. He held the axe, tried to tear it away, as the green woman began to lick the blade clean.

Roland had never seen anything like this, had never heard of anything like this green woman. She had to be a summoned being, perhaps some fell monster drawn from the netherworld. Dark green blood flowed from a couple of small wounds. Green, like green flames, he thought.

Nearby, the King's skyrider still whimpered. Roland called to her softly, "Get out of here, child. Walk slowly. Do not run." He backed away himself, knowing that he could be of no use to Baron Poll.

The green woman stopped licking the axe blade, turned and watched Roland, then repeated in a soft voice, matching his every tone and inflection, "Get out of here, child. Walk slowly. Do not run."

Roland did not know if the beast sought to command him or was merely repeating his words. He backed away a step, his feet crunching in the dry brown gra.s.s. A twig snapped beneath his heel.

The green woman licked the axe blade and shouted at Baron Poll, "I'm the one you're after. I'm the one you want. You smell blood? You want some? Come and get it."

Baron Poll nodded as she licked the blade clean, let the axe go in her hand. "Blood," he whispered. "Blood."

The green woman stopped licking, stared at him. "Blood," she said, running her tongue over the blade. "Blood."

Roland had backed up a dozen paces by now, wondered if he should turn and run. You never run from a dog, he knew, or a bear. The movement of your legs only enticed the animals. He decided that he should not run from the green woman, either.

He backed away and turned. In half a heartbeat, the green woman pounced, caught him from behind.

"Blood!" she said, hefting him in the air. She sniffed his wrist, where he had sc.r.a.ped himself only moments before, inhaled deeply the scent of his blood.

"No!" he cried as she set him down, shoved him onto his side. Dirt entered his mouth, and he smelled the bitter scent of wild carrots, the fragrant mold upon the wild barley that grew about.

Then there was a burning pain as the green woman shoved one long claw into his wrist. He struggled to escape, tried to kick at her face. She held him, ran her tongue over his left wrist, savoring his life's blood.

He kicked her ankles. Though she looked delicate as a dancer, every muscle in those legs seemed to be a cord of steel. His struggling availed him nothing. She held him tighter, crushing his arm.

He gasped in pain.

The green woman sucked at his wound, pulling out his vital juices with a soft slurping sound. He cried out, fought for his very life, fearing that at any moment she would bite into his throat.

"Help!" Roland shouted, looking for Baron Poll. But the fat knight had gotten up shakily, and stared at Roland in helpless horror.

By the Powers, he thought. Asleep for twenty years, and I wake up only to die after the first week.

Suddenly, the child raced to Baron Poll, grabbed his axe, and leapt toward them. "No! No!" Roland cried.

The girl swung the axe blade down on the green woman, and there was a dull thud.

The green woman stopped, loosed her grip a little.

The woman stared at the child. She shouted, "No! No!"

Then the green woman let him go completely, and Roland was free. He tried to scramble through the gra.s.s, but tripped and fell three paces off.

The green woman eyed him hungrily.

"No," the child repeated. "Not him." She swung the axe down a. second time, hitting the green woman in the skull. The green woman crouched on the ground. She looked up at the child, parroted, "No."

The girl dropped the axe. She'd put a notch in the green woman's skin, just the barest of cuts. Dark blood oozed from it.

The child reached down and stroked the woman's hair at the front of her scalp. The green woman arched her back, as if pleased by the attention.

"When training a dangerous animal," the girl said softly to Roland and Baron Poll, "you must reward it for good behavior, and punish it for bad."

Roland nodded. Of course the girl would know about the training of beasts. She was a skyrider, after all, and would have to tend the graaks.

Roland had been the King's butcher. As a child, one of his first duties had been to carry bones and sc.r.a.ps of offal to the kennels, so that beast master Hamrickson could train the King's war dogs. He thought he knew what she was asking of him.

He backed off carefully, to avoid drawing the green woman's attention, then painfully limped toward the dead graak.

"No, I'll do it," the girl said. "She should think of me as her master."

She hurried past him, circled the lizard. Her eyes seemed blank with pain as she looked at the reptile. Then she leaned over and pulled the hound's carca.s.s from its jaws. It was not a small feat. The wolfhound was a huge dog that easily weighed a hundred pounds, yet the child hefted its carca.s.s easily.

I am a fool, Roland thought. The girl is a skyrider, with at least one endowment of brawn. Despite her small size, she is stronger than I am. I had thought to save her, and instead the child saved me.

She brought the hound back, laid it at the feet of the green woman. "Blood," she whispered. "For you."

The green woman sniffed the hound, began licking blood from its pelt. When she seemed a.s.sured that no one would take the thing from her, she tore into the carca.s.s and ripped into its back and haunches.

"Good girl," the child said. "Very good."

The green woman looked up at the child. Blood foamed at her mouth as she parroted, "Good girl."

"You're a smart one, too," the child said. She pointed to herself and whispered, "Averan, Averan." The green woman repeated her name. She pointed to Roland, and he gave his own name. Baron Poll finally came close, gave his own name. Then Averan pointed to the green woman.

The green woman stopped eating and stared blankly.

CHAPTER 10.

THE GEM.

Tears of rage and pain threatened to blind Averan as she worked, rage and pain that came from seeing her graak dead. She didn't want to seem a child, didn't want to act like a child. But she found it nearly impossible to keep up a fascade of indifference.

So after Roland and Baron Poll introduced themselves, she busied herself tending Roland's wound, moving about numbly as if in a dream. The green woman's fall from the sky, the shock of seeing Leatherneck dead, the horrors that she knew had occurred at Keep Haberd, all left her feeling dazed and wrung out. She wanted to scream.

Instead, she bit her lip and worked.

Averan knew that the wound in Roland's wrist stung like a hornet when she washed it. The wound was deep, ragged, and it bled badly. She went to a well beside the cottage for a bucket of water, then poured it over him and blotted the wound. He stifled a cry, and the green woman drew near eagerly, like a dog begging for sc.r.a.ps.

"No," Averan warned the green woman. "This one's not for you." Baron Poll grabbed the axe. The fat knight shook it threateningly. The green woman backed off.

Roland laughed miserably. "Thank you, child, for not feeding me to your pet." Averan finished wiping the water away: Her lightest scrubbing had opened the wound again, and she used part of Roland's tunic as a compress, holding the wound closed.

"She's not my pet," Averan objected, trying to hold in her own pain.

"Try telling her that," Baron Poll said. "In half an hour she'll be rolling over for you and trying to nose her way into your bed."

Averan knew that they were right. The green woman had accepted her, had accepted her from the moment that she woke to find Averan kneeling over her. She was like a baby graak that way, new from its egg. But just because the Baron was right didn't mean she had to like him. He was the oaf who had killed Leatherneck, after all.

The green woman thinks I'm her mother, Averan realized. Averan shook her head. She didn't know what to do with the beast.

"Did you summon the creature?" Baron Poll asked.

"Summon her?" Averan asked.

"Well, it's not a natural creature, is it?" Baron Poll said, eyeing the green woman warily. "I've. never heard of its like. So it must have been summoned."

Averan shrugged. Baron Poll's question was beyond her, beyond any of them. She knew nothing of magic, aside from what one might hear from an occasional hedge wizard. Keep Haberd had seldom entertained anyone with power.

"It's the green of fire," Roland said. "Flames can be green. Do you have any power over fire?"

The green woman got off her haunches, went to the dead body of Leatherneck, and began to feed. Averan winced and looked away.

"No," Averan said mechanically. "I sometimes light the fire in the hearth at our aerie; it's all I can do to keep one going. I'm no flameweaver."

Averan wiped the last of the blood from Roland's wound with a corner of Roland's tunic. "The earth can be green, too," she said. "As is water." She blinked a tear from her eye.

Roland didn't answer, but Baron Poll did. "You're right, girl, but the summoner's, art is practiced by flameweavers, not by earth magicians or water wizards."

"She fell from the sky," Averan said. "That's all I know. I saw her drop out of the air in front of me. I was above the clouds. Maybe she's a creature of the air."

Baron Poll half-turned to look down at her. "Summoned," he said thoughtfully, sure of himself.

Averan frowned. She had an endowment of wit, and so was a quick learner. But she was only nine years old, and she'd never studied the magical arts. "You think I am the summoner? You're daft."

Baron Poll was the oldest, and even Roland looked to him for counsel. He said, "Maybe so, but I've heard it said that the Powers have their own reasons for doing what they do. Perhaps you didn't summon it; it may have been sent."

That seemed just as unlikely. Roland's bleeding had finally stopped, and the wound looked clean enough.

Averan noticed that some of the green woman's blood was on her fingers. She dipped them in the bucket and tried to scrub the blood off, but the green stuff had already soaked into her skin, staining her hands as if she'd spilled ink, leaving irregular blotches. She supposed it would wear off.

"I'm sorry about your graak," Baron Poll said for the third time since he'd introduced himself. "Can you forgive me?"

Averan fought back bitter tears. Leatherneck was not my graak, she told herself. It was the King's, or Brand's, more than it belonged to anyone else.

Still she had fed the beast for years, had groomed it and sc.r.a.ped its teeth and filed its claws. She'd loved the old lizard.

She'd known he was old, that he'd only had another summer or two left, at most.

She knew that she should not blame Baron Poll for killing it. Brand had always said, "Never punish a beast for having a good heart. Even the kindest brutes will sometimes nip you by mistake."

The same was true with men, she supposed. Even fat old knights who should have known better. Tears flooded her eyes.

"It is forgotten, Sir Paunch," Averan said, trying to make light of it, trying to keep the pain from her voice.

"Go ahead, child, hurl insults if it will make you feel better," the old knight said. "You can do better than that!"

Averan wanted to hold her tongue, but it hurt too much to keep the pain in. Still, she dared not be too rude to a lord. "If it pleases you, Sir Breadbasket, Sir Greasebarrel, Sir Broadb.u.t.t."

"That's better, child," Poll said with a sullen expression.

"Though he is a baron," Roland corrected the girl, "and should more properly be called Baron Broadb.u.t.t."

Averan smiled weakly, sniffed and wiped her tears away, satisfied with the name-calling, at least for now.

Baron Poll asked, "Where were you going? Are you carrying an important message?"

Averan considered. It was the most important message that she'd ever carried: news of an impending invasion. "Paladane has heard by now," Averan said truthfully. "Reavers were coming down to Keep Haberd from the mountains. By now, Haberd has fallen. I was to bear a message to Duke Paladane, but riders on force horses were also sent. Master Brand had me fly out only to save my life."